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Tuesday, 30 June 2015

This was my first visit to COLLECT, the
International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects. The North West Craft Network
awarded bursaries to a number of curators in the North West, and I was one of
the recipients.

The excitement built in the couple of weeks
before as galleries which were displaying filled my inbox with information
about the artists who would be showing at the Saatchi Gallery. An invitation to
apply for the Craft Council’s Museum Purchase Fund also arrived, with the
opportunity to bid for pieces from the fair which would be purchased by the
Crafts Council.

I had three main aims from the fair:

The first was to solidify my ideas as to
which artists I will shortlist for our Contemporary Art Society Craft
acquisition later this year. I was still in the initial research phase for this
and have been visiting as many exhibitions and artists as I can. COLLECT was a
great opportunity to see work by some makers I am interested in, and of course,
see work which I was previously unaware of.

The second was to meet some of the makers who
are represented in our collection, several of whom I’ve had e-mail and phone
contact with but have never actually met face-to-face – Natasha Daintry and Ann
Sutton in particular.

The third was to meet other colleagues from
across the country who are also working alongside makers.

The morning session was the private view, at
which speeches were given by Rosy Greenlees, Director of the Crafts Council and
Geoffrey Crossick, Chair of the Trustees of the Crafts Council. My highlight of
this section was the announcement that Gallery Oldham was one of the three
museums across the country awarded work under the Crafts Council Museum
Purchase Fund. We were awarded ‘Patience Flower XXIII’, 2014 by Vipoo Srivilasa and ‘Journey Jar’, 2015 by Adam Buick.

The afternoon part of the Curator Day was key
note sessions followed by two case studies of recent acquisitions with the
Contemporary Art Society. The first key note was a really interesting
presentation by Tulga Beyerle, Director of the Dresden Museum of DecorativeArts, in which Beyerle described working in a small overlooked museum in
Germany. Beyerle’s museum had little in the way of twentieth century craft so she
had decided to start from scratch with a twenty-first century craft collection.
While the context in Dresden is really different from the context in which I
work, there was lots to take from Beyerle’s presentation, and her pragmatism, commitment
and enthusiasm was really infectious.

Next up was Alastair Hudson from MIMA who spoke about the challenges of ensuring that museums remain valued
by the communities they serve, rather than merely being tolerated at best. He
talked in detail about loads of really exciting initiatives happening in
Middlesborough. There’s not space to go into detail about them here – but do go
and have a look at their website.

Next came the two case studies from curators
who had recently received funding from the Contemporary Art Society – Fiona
Slattery Clark from Birmingham Museums and Katherine McClung-Oakes from Bury
Art Museum. It was really helpful to me to listen to their experiences as I am
at the early stages of my first experience of the process this year.

So all in all, I had a really great time at
COLLECT 2015 and learnt a lot. There was a real buzz around the show. It was
exciting to see so many private collectors supporting the sector. I personally
really enjoyed bumping into makers who I’ve only met recently like Michael
Eden, and catching up with others like Halima Cassell who I’ve known for a
while. It was SO brilliant to spend that much time in a space which was
brimming with lovely, lovely things.